To Kill a Mockingbird
by Winter Echoes
Summary: "He's dead, Kate. Richard Castle is dead, and he's not coming back." Set somewhere in season four.


For three weeks after Richard Castle was killed, no one at the Twelfth saw or heard from Kate Beckett. Then one Tuesday morning, they found her badge and gun placed neatly on Gates' desk.

* * *

"He's dead, Kate. Richard Castle is dead, and he's not coming back." The words echoed through her head like gunshots, and she poured another shot of vodka down her throat to burn away her thoughts in the red-hot fire. She couldn't think. She pounded the glass down on the table, and her shaky hands began to pour another. She couldn't afford to think. Liquor sloshed to the floor in clumsy spatters as she downed the latest in however many drinks it took to ease the pain. However many still wasn't enough. Her thoughts exploded against the walls of her mind, never ceasing. The same thought, over and over: Richard Castle is dead, and it's your fault. Her trembling hand lost its grip on the glass, and it shattered to the floor. But the sound was covered by the deafening cries inside her mind. The gunshot. She grabbed hold of the bottle with both hands, and drank until she couldn't feel.

* * *

For three weeks, they let her be. They had to let her be, they told themselves. There was no other choice. She'd be okay. Kate Beckett was always okay. But when Ryan and Esposito arrived at the Precinct that Tuesday morning and saw Gates staring at Beckett's gun and badge laying solemnly on the desk in front of her, they knew that this time was different. Hell, how could they expect her to be okay? They weren't okay. Castle was their friend. One of their best friends. And he was even more to Beckett. The three of them stood and stared at that badge and gun for a long time, Esposito and Ryan and Gates. Gates had always wanted that man gone, but not like this. Never like this.

After a long while, they stopped staring. Wordlessly, Ryan and Esposito left Gates' office. It wasn't long before they were standing at the door to Beckett's apartment, Ryan's fist raised as he prepared himself to knock. His hand trembled as it moved closer and closer to the door, and then it fell in a sudden, jarring motion. He couldn't do this. For three weeks, he had thought everything was okay. But it wasn't. Things were not okay, and they'd never be okay again. Castle was dead. CASTLE. The oversized child, the writer, the dreamer. How was he dead? He shouldn't be DEAD.

"We've got to do this, bro," Esposito murmured. "I know everything's messed up right now, but no matter how hard it's hitting us, think of how hard it's hitting Beckett. She needs our help, whether she's gonna admit it or not." With a nod, Ryan raised his hand to the door again and rapped his knuckles hard against the wood. "Beckett?" he called tentatively. "Kate?"

Ryan and Esposito stood outside the door for hours, half waiting for a reply they knew would never come, half lost in their own thoughts. This wasn't right, each of them thought in their own anguish in their own mind. He wasn't a cop. He wasn't supposed to get hurt.

* * *

Martha and Alexis waited two months before they held the funeral. They clung to the fact that the police were never able to pull his body out of the harbour. If there was no body, that meant he could still somehow be alive. That's how it always worked in his books. If the body was never found, it was pretty much a guarantee that the character wasn't really dead. But as the first month faded into the second, the cold sting of reality began to drip its way into the fictional world they had raised around themselves. He was dead. Richard Castle was dead, and he was never coming back. He wasn't writing this novel. He would never write a novel again. This story was reality, and the author of reality wasn't about to follow the conventions of the genre.

* * *

Each day blurred into the next for Beckett. She couldn't remember when she slept or when she woke, or even if she slept at all. She barely ate, she never left her apartment. Her hair was a mess of limp curls, ripe with the tang of spilled vodka. She could not bear to face reality, so while Martha and Alexis protected their hearts inside a cocoon of fiction, Beckett lost herself in a world without thought. In the rare moments she was sober enough for a whisper to flit through her mind before she quashed into with another nip of vodka, her mind lashed outward with thoughts of rage and inward with thoughts of guilt.

_It isn't fair!_ the voice inside her mind screamed._ I already had my turn losing someone! I've already fought battles, too many of them to count! Why me? Why me again? And why him? Why couldn't it have been me to die? Why did it happen to him?_ And then a smaller voice, a crueler voice, replied. _It's all your fault, you know. It's your fault he's dead. He followed you around like a lost little puppy, and you liked it. He put himself in danger time and time again, for you. If it wasn't for you, he'd be alive right now. It's your fault he's dead._ Then Beckett would tilt back her head and pour the burning poison down, down, down, until the voices left her and she was free once again, lost in her blissful, unfeeling dark.

But all too soon the liquor was gone, and slowly she came out of her drunken stupor. Her head throbbed, but she welcomed the pain. She deserved the pain. It was her fault that he was dead. But as the haze of vodka began to lift, the thoughts that she had been trying to drown out rained back down upon her, and she clutched at empty bottles, begging for relief. He was dead. Castle was dead. Really and truly dead. She clutched her knees with her arms as she rocked back and forth on her apartment floor, tears streaming down her cheeks. She had never thought she could feel this way again. She had never thought that she would open herself up to anyone so much again. But somehow, without wanting to, she had. Now she had to pay the price for letting that wall fall down.

She itched to go down to the store and buy another bottle to drown out the guilt and despair and anger that weighed upon her like a cloud. But she couldn't. She didn't deserve to escape. He was dead. It was her fault. The more she sobered, the further she plunged into the dark and swirling clutches of despair. On the fourth Tuesday after his death, she woke up at four o'clock in the morning, showering off the stench of vodka and stale clothes for the first time in too long. She slipped on her jacket, and took her badge and gun as she stepped out of the apartment.

For the first time in weeks, she walked into the Precinct. As she left, she vowed never to come back again. When her mom died, she dedicated her life to revenge. But the fire that had burned inside her ever since was gone now. She didn't want to track anyone down and make them pay. She just wanted him back.

On her way home, her resolve crumbled. She stumbled through the door of her apartment with a bottle already opened, her other hand holding a bag with dozens more.

By the time Ryan and Esposito knocked on her door, she was long gone, lost beneath the burning in her throat.


End file.
